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[Damiac]

Heh, yeah, it's a really fun game, but there are some glaring bugs.

My first playthrough attempt was normal ironman, with the tutorial on.
It went fine, I launched my second satelite as instructed, but over a different continent than my starting one.
I continued playing as normal, until that second satelite caught a UFO.
Uh oh, no interceptors(The tutorial never told me to build one, and I'm not sure it would have even allowed it anyway).  But the tutorial really, really wanted me to deal with that UFO, so it blanked out the option to ignore it. Also, just for the fun of it, it disabled the function of going back. So my options were: No interceptors available(greyed out) or ignore UFO (greyed out) Since this was ironman, it made sure to autosave this awesome state of can't do anything.  While I was able to quit, and come back, all that got me was the ability to look at my base, or go back to the ufo with no options.   
So, that was the end of that playthrough.  No more tutorial for me, but I don't understand how that got past the testing stage...

[majikero]

Odd, usually, the first ufo and terror mission is in the continent you started on.

[Metalax]

You should start with two interceptors. Normally you can tell which country you are going to want to cover with your second sattelite a while before your sattelite is ready for launch so you can order your second interceptor moved beforehand to be in place. I'm pretty sure that I was able to do this on my first playthrough using the tutorial.

[GlyphGryph]

I discovered the art of save-scumming ironman, as in if you kill the game, it will go back to the beginning of your last turn (usually).

This is literally the only way it was playable for me, as certain bugs would have been crippling otherwise. Of course, I only discovered it because the bugs were so crippling I couldn't access any menus or end my turn, but as a general rule I'll use it whenever something seriously bugged out happens. Like characters moving into impossible positions, being unable to fire/move with my units, being unable to end my turn, and others of the ilk. And since the seed is pre-genned each turn, that means I can play exactly the same up until where the bug occured and still feel okay with myself.

I'm always tempted in situations like the one above, though, where the situation is grossly unfair. I didn't redo those on my first run through Classic Impossible, but on the second run I'd pretty much lost all my patience with that sort of BS and just redid the turn whenever the game lied to me about such things. By that point, I was mostly only playing ironman because normal clogs up my save screen and/or I forget to ever save, so I don't see it as a big thing.

[PanH]

I tend to play ironman without ironman, because it's buggy as hell, and it makes it harder (or just slower) to save, etc, to make sure your game won't get stuck. But I never savescum 

[Damiac]

You should start with two interceptors. Normally you can tell which country you are going to want to cover with your second sattelite a while before your sattelite is ready for launch so you can order your second interceptor moved beforehand to be in place. I'm pretty sure that I was able to do this on my first playthrough using the tutorial.

Oh, I could have done that, perhaps.  But the tutorial never prompted me to, so I didn't.  I assumed that since the tutorial had me make a satelite, it would have me take any other necessary steps.  But my point is, the tutorial shouldn't have let me get into a situation where the game just couldn't proceed.  I could understand if my sat got blown up, and it was like "That's why we build interceptors dummy".  But the game was literally stuck at that point.  Even if I hadn't been playing ironman, I'd have had to load up a save from at least 3 days prior, to move an interceptor in time, assuming the UFO showing up at that time wasn't just random.

The first ufo was on the original continent, so it was no problem.  But the second UFO was on the other continent. 

Anyway, I'm playing classic ironman, no tutorial now, and I'm just about to do the base assault.  I just shot down a big ship, so I'll take care of that first (just got firestorms and emp, I'd taken my sweet time capturing an outsider...)

It'd be nice if LOS was more obvious when moving units, like if it showed the little alien heads when you put the cursor over the tile, so you knew you'd have a shot once you moved.  I've gotten pretty good at guessing when I'll have a shot, but it's not always clear... or logical, as shown in that picture.

[Mephansteras]

Yeah, I'm fine with not having that info from a Tactical standpoint (you wouldn't KNOW if you had LOS until of got there), but the fact that some of the LOS issues are ridiculous gets a bit grating.

[nenjin]

I hate the LOS system in that it's only approximating LOS and sometimes it does it badly. I've had guys shoot me through 2 buildings before and while they missed horribly, the way the shot missed implied they could see me through solid walls.

[Thexor]

Oy, you think you've got LOS problems...

Yeah, the LOS system is terrible sometimes.

[PanH]

Just saw that

[Mephansteras]

Oy, you think you've got LOS problems...

Yeah, the LOS system is terrible sometimes.

They really need to fix LOS issues with slopes. It's terrible.

[GlyphGryph]

The weirdest part is, sometimes switching around between characters and waiting will FIX it.

O_O

That's the part that boggles my mind.

[Sensei]

Oy, you think you've got LOS problems...

Yeah, the LOS system is terrible sometimes.

They really need to fix LOS issues with slopes. It's terrible.

Dear god, slopes. Once a my entire party surrounded a group of elite mutons, to within a mere few tiles, with no cover, and somehow failed to spot them. Until the mutons' turn, of course.

[sambojin]

I don't know if this is relrvant or not, but meh. I've got some time......

On the RNG-seeding-at-start-of-turn "issue", it has it's upsides and downsides. It depends what you'd like out of the game. On ironman, it makes it a bit of a crap-shoot, because even with good tactics, you're sometimes pre-destined to fail. Unless you kill the game through task-manager and come back to the same turn.

But it does fit in with the idea of "strategy" game. On a non-ironman mode, you have unlimited reloads of the game. If you wanted, you could explore the game, find out the strategy that could work for that turn, because in a sense, it's pre-determined. There's several workable strategies for any given turn, but sometimes a 95% chance to hit isn't one of them.

There's also the other side of it. It's bullshit and re-seeding an RNG off milliseconds after midnight is cheap and easy and completely doable in a turnbased game, for every goddamned action or shot. It's highish in cpu overhead if it has be done per frame, but 6-18 times per 90 seconds? Bleh, piss-easy for any computer.

So it depends on the style of game. If you didn't save-scum, you'd never notice it. But it is a fact in this game.

So is it strategy like chess you want? Some things always happen? Or a nice, the-percentage-shown-actually-means-something strategy?

Most people actually play the game, not save-scum the bejesus out of it, to see what "could" work. I can see the reason why it's done this way, and the AI may even make some of it's decisions based off the seed as well, but the other way would work fine.

On another point. If they release a large amount of maps, especially multiplayer maps, as DLC, what happens then? Can only players with that DLC play on those maps?

Again, might be good, might be bad. My head says free and open multiplayer is good, but the other side would allow for championship-play maps, and maps as unlockables.

Erm, yeah. Discuss

[Sirus]

I don't save scum, even on non-Ironman games. To me, missing a 95% shot, while rage-inducing, is part of the classic X-COM experience. When the situation goes to crap and you lose your squad? Bummer! Better hope you can recover before the world ends.